In some ways the worst types of abuse/neglect are often the most covert types which remain covert because wider society doesn't consider it abuse or neglect. The sufferer feels the damaging affects but can't quite label/describe them and there are no supports in wider society to address it. That's what makes it all the more damaging.
@@LuciaExpressions exactly. It becomes an ongoing cycle. It's one that I've dealt with and only recently have learned to break, through educating myself and becoming aware of abusive personalities, particularly those connected with clinically recognized B Cluster personality disorders/traits such as narcissism, BPD, and antisocial tendencies. I'm dyspraxic and was raised in a highly abusive narcissistic family system where I was not accepted, let alone loved for who I was, neurodivergence and all.
@@LuciaExpressions whatever helps and brings happiness is well worth it. Sometimes a lot of alone time can be an effective part of the recovery process. Whenever you're ready to have a more active social life, you'll know it. Play everything by ear and do what feels right for you.
"My struggles were seen as intentional" So much of what you've said I relate to, both in my childood and my relationship with my Mum currently. It's heartbreaking to feel so deeply misunderstood and shamed / blamed for struggling
I kept getting a painful feeling in my chest when you were talking about this stuff, I relate to a lot of it in ways that are hard for me to put in words. I'm also pretty alone in the world as a result as well since I had to stop talking to my dad for my own safety and my mom died a while back. I don't know if others here have experienced this but a lot of my meltdowns as a child were framed as me being hysterical and crazy. I remember my parents would threaten to film me during then, and on the outside they just looked like panic attacks I think. From what I've heard from other autistic folks with abusive parents they've also heard the "What do you think the kids at your school would think if I showed them a video of you acting crazy" threat. Even now at 30 I hide most of my emotions from others unless I reach like some kind of extreme crisis point, and even then I don't have the tools for dealing with that in a healthy way since I was never really given them. Telling your crying kid to leave and not come out of their room until they've got a smile on their face ain't it ;-;
This is extremely relatable stuff. At the age of 40, diagnosed as autistic at 35, and starting to unpack the fact that literally everything I was punished for as a child (up to being beaten with a belt by my father) was a consequence of undiagnosed autism and something I literally had no control over. I don't know how to get over the degree to which I now know I've been mistreated my entire life.
I learned from a young age that 'children should be seen and not heard' so I spent all my energy trying to never show emotion and stopped asking questions and was seen as shy. I believed I was the issue and managed to switch off by becoming absorbed in books as much as possible (under the covers at night until I would fall asleep and kill the torch battery). As a teen I did everything to escape through drink and drugs which got me the anxiety and depression diagnosis then Borderline personality disorder when I turned 18. I was diagnosed with ASD and ADHD at 38 (2 years ago) and I am really struggling to let go of my control of myself (being still, polite, lacking in boundaries etc). I've isolated myself since the beginning of lockdown and dont want to be around anyone as am now sober and cant be around anyone as a result. I find myself living/running on adrenaline when around people and being in flight/freeze and mostly fawn which takes me ages to get out of wgen im on my own again as i struggle to relax without drugs.
I have a very similar story .I relate .I am unable to get clean and sober and have been isolated for years now.I don't even know who I am.I was sober for a few years ,then my son took his life and I have been in the cups and dope hatd since 07.I know it's really scary but and I also know AA helped me alot. I just don't care anymore.I just turned 60. You aren't alone. We need connection .
@Opticaldelusionist I'm sorry to hear about you loosing you're son in that way. That must be so difficult to deal with. I hope that in time, you are able to find a way/the will to care for yourself again. I wish you the best xx
This is very relatable. Today I told my partner I'm frightened he won't want to see me because I've been crying a lot recently and I shouldn't be around people unless I can "hold myself together". I don't think I know what it's like to be comforted when I'm sad, I've always been told to go and deal with my emotions by myself and come back when I'm "normal" again. As a child, and as an adult in relationships. I remember early in my marriage sitting at the top of the stairs sobbing because I was "too much" and my wife needed a break. The sibling favouritism thing is relevant to me also. My mother had post-natal depression and it was well known in my early years that *I* was the one who had ruined her life and made her want to die. For a long time I've felt like a monster who hurts people by just existing, especially not knowing that I'm autistic and not understanding why people get upset and offended and some of the things I do and say, and when I ask for an explanation they tell me I must know what I've been doing and have been doing it on purpose.
This is sooo relatable! I've really struggled with accepting as an adult that my parents are never going to give me what I would want from a parent if that makes sense...? I get envious when i see the support and friendliness that other people recieve from their parents when mine can be so cold. As you said i always had a roof over my head etc but they raised me with so much anger/impatience/uncaring that I just always feel like i missed out massively with regards the nice stuff that i see other people have experienced. I'm still trying to accept it but it's hard! I find it easier to have a good relationship with them when i don't see them very often.
Same. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to have supportive, loving, caring parents. Never had that and I struggle to let go of the idea that they might change one day and miraculously turn into the wonderful parents I’ve always needed. It’s tough.
I can totally relate, my parents put me in the firing line so many times and this has effected my ability to function in the world as an adult. But the thing I find most frustrating is that I keep replaying past traumas in my head over and over and I don't know why? I can't seem to move on!
This is all so relatable. Recently my sister deleted me from social media because I was “too much” for her. When I was crying to my mom about why my sister was treating me this way, my mom said my sister was popular in high school and COULD HAVE been a mean girl but actually wasn’t. I was like, what the actual eff are you talking about?! I’m so sorry your mom couldn’t take you seriously 😔
I used to consider my childhood "normal & happy" until quite recently. But it really wasn't! I went through a lot of similar experiences, although my parents never told me they loved me - it just wasn't ever said in our house. I've only very recently (last few years) started to think of my experiences as abuse & neglect.
I remember my mother trying all the time to get me to play with other kids growing up and even getting stuff started as a means to get me to play along. I'd play with the other kids just fine for a little bit until I eventually managed to break off and play by myself. I was always told I was weird or creepy due to my not knowing what to do or how to do it. Eventually I started hyper focusing on the actions of others to try figuring out what the hell am I meant to do? It lead me into being used by "friends" and in the end I became more and more reclusive/hermit like and now I mostly spend my time alone and dreading interaction with people outside of my inner circle. I have few friends but the ones I do have I am very close with. In my youth I couldn't stop chattering away. Now it's more like "I want to say something, but odds are they won't understand. Never mind then." I describe it to other folks like this: God gave me a passive ability known as "Own Tempo". It grants insight and bonus resistance to confusion (due to the hyper analysis self defense mechanism). Penalty: Madness (neuro divergent traits I later realized). Whenever an action is made (spoken, written etc.) flip a coin; If the result is heads complete action as normal. If the result is tails action attempt fails and is misunderstood. Stupid I know. it's just how I explain things to folks who don't have to struggle with this stuff.
Absolutely! I have too much knowledge about human nature, minds, interacts, social dynamics, and much more because I had to learn it to survive. Now the innocence is gone forever, the innocence of natural interaction that others enjoy. I learned so I could have great relationships, but now I have learned that's not how it works, which is very sad. I have only my husband for company, and he's on the spectrum too.
Hi Dana, I can completely identify with your childhood from the opposite side of the world. I didn't dare remember my childhood during my young adulthood, I remembered little other than the names & dates, and that I had told myself that I would never forget how much I hated authority, my childhood, my mom, & the Catholic Church. I went to extremes to block it out, until I started remembering horrible events from my that I couldn't communicate how they happened to anyone without them asking questions that I couldn't answer. I experienced sibling favoritism severely, my mom loved my little sister, & hated me. I was gaslit too. It took me until after her death when I heard her older sister talk about the traumas the 2 girls had faced in a family which favored the much older & much younger boys, & why my mom had it way worse. Lately I always cry when I try to remember the past, though my childhood eididic memory record remains locked in there. I hope you read my comments on your recent videos.
So relatable...brought tears to my eyes. I'm sorry you had to go through what you went through, but thanks for sharing and helping those of us who went through similar things feel less alone.
I've been witnessing my youngest sister out of 3 other siblings going through the same abysmal treatment you describe, which brings up traumatic memories from my childhood and what ive seen all my other siblings go through because we're all autistic including both my parents, but not a single one of us are diagnosed and they are completely heartless and cruel about our struggles and sensitivities I wanna do something but I don't know how, mum has her own tantrums and will scream insults at me if I try to correct her or give me sinister glares the few times she's caught me trying to do better for my siblings in their absence. It's so depressing hearing the kids meltdown and fight every day while being put down by my parents
I had the same experience of a perfect looking mum from the outside and her being absolutely disinterested in... parenting me, and being just not there really. i dont think I had ever heard someone talking about that exact experience and it made me feel less alone and crazy like im making these thins up. thanks
I spent my childhood trying to keep my covert narc mother safe from my violent sadistic psychopath father who was SA me all of my childhood and filming it. I've seen footage of her walk in and catch him when I'm an infant. Nothing changed and she told me she 'stayed for me.' I've brought it up with her 4 times as an adult and she either blacks it out afterwards or is outright lying to me. The rest of society and people not caring about me is so much worse than the abuse itself. After 38 years I've lost hope and faith thanks to 'normal' people. Reading this it sounds so bad, yet my mother plays the victim so well that I feel guilty reducing contact with her. Plus I have hEDS and can't work so I have no one else and spent all my time poor at home with my elderly doggo
I feel like I was the favorite in the opposite way, where it looked like I wasn't struggling and that my sisters were the only ones who did because from a super young age I was just taught to internalize everything. My parents took me not looking like I was struggling as an excuse to ignore me so they could focus on my sisters because 'he's fine, we don't need to worry' meanwhile I was stuck being alone almost 24/7 playing video games in my room by myself because no one ever came to check up on me. Most of my childhood is just blank in my mind cuz I spent most of my time dissociating because that was my main way of handling things. There was never any physical abuse or anything, but as you said in the vid, the emotional side just wasn't there. It made me feel like a background character / outsider to my own life and everything around me. The biggest gut punch happened a couple years ago when I was 22 and randomly my mother and stepdad told me that they were trying to figure out if they died randomly which out of the three of us kids would be the most 'ok'. And immediately they both said me. It's still stuck on my mind because it was basically confirmation that they do not know me / don't worry about me at all. It really fucked me up. I'm in therapy for this stuff now and definitely had the same thing happen of 'nah I don't think anything was wrong' lol
My parents didn't want a disabled child. So they always told other people that I was just acting up to get attention. Then at home they would actually tell me " we only provide you with what you need to survive because it's the law. " When I would ask questions they would say " why are you so stupid" . Meanwhile my little half brother was the golden child and could do no wrong. I was never good in school D' s and F' s and I was punished for not trying hard enough. To this day I am undiagnosed , But I believe that I am autistic. I still don't know how to get help. I fear asking a doctor for an autism test, because I'm afraid they will think that I am self-diagnosing.
If you are able to come up with a chunk of cash somehow which is a tall ask I know, embrace autism is a practice run by an autistic woman who is seemingly very genuine with how much she knows about autism as presently is researched. Plus she's in Canada and it's all done online. I have been sitting on my assessment for a year feeling like a melodramatic imposter monster despite getting well over the average autistic female score on numerous psychometrics, which have been proving to have a high accuracy percentage in assessing autistic people vs neurotypical. I can't say I recommend with full gusto until I finally get through my internal fight with myself and actually send in the assessment. That's also assuming she still will take me for an appointment I was supposed to finish the questionnaire for within 3 months, not a full year. There's a chance I lost all that money but I have some hope she's not going to be that capitalistic and tack on consequence fee for being a year late or whatever. I digress though. Just wanted to pass the information on about the potential resource and I hope I am conveying support and empathy as is my intended expression. If anything else is interpreted, especially if it's hurtful, I am so sorry
Yes. The sibling favoritism. I am lucky my sister and i are very close now, but it disnt use to be that way. . My sister admitted to me as adults that she was favored by our parents, and knew it was wrong. It was a very wonderful gift. Thank you for sharing your story.
Dana, I will keep it short. I lived a very similar life, but as an only child. I felt very alone with my struggles. Thank you for sharing, you have made a difference.
I had a Neurotypical step-mother. She used the money my father was ordered in his divorce with my Mom to pay for me as adult child support on building herself a children's book empire. She used to blame me for everything, and she and her mother, Celia, called me "the black sheep of the family" because I'm Autistic. She and her mother wouldn't let me sit anywhere near my half-brother, Jessee, because I "might contaminate him" somehow, and they would wipe their hands off on their clothes anytime they accidently touoched me as if I was contagious. She made up lies about me all the time and was really mean to me. It was horrible, It was a horrible experiuence to even know her, There wasn't one moment she didn't inflict trauma on me. Nobody has any idea what she was like to me when no one else was around.
Depression at age 12, is a hormone problem. I’ve had severe depression, and terrible anxiety, from age 12 (still have it today). I have too much estrogen, for a male. For me, there were physical consequences, as well. It’s created quite a mess. My childhood was a string of nonstop trauma. Would’ve been nice to know about the causes of my problems: ADHD, Autism, SCA. (I’ve been estranged from my mother, the primary source of my trauma, for over a decade. She traumatized my children, which was an unforgivable act.
Avery similar experience and it never got any better despite my diagnosis and today at 57 years of age my family still dismiss me and have no idea of why I struggle to live on my own why I don't work why I don't have a relazionship and why I have very few genuine freinds I hold two degrees in Science subjects and they expectatuon is far too high.I constantly lock myself out of my home I am disorganised forget appointments and can't deal with family events its shocking I was very traumatised😢😢😢😢😢
I’m sorry you went through this… 😢 I also come from an emotionally abusive & neglectful family. It’s a struggle to recover from it, even after years of ‘working’ on it… ❤
My sister and i shared a room growing up. My mom would sit down with my sister and hold her and sweet talk her for 10 to 30 minutes at bedtime. She would walk past me and say goodnight.
It’s so confusing when you have a detailed accurate memory and your parents rewrite theirs. Like, I still know my memories are the truth, but now you can’t talk about them with your parents because their memories “don’t agree” - that’s what’s confusing.
ok firstly, the thing you said about not wanting to make things seem worse than they were broke my heart because you had just described your mother treating you like absolute dirt in the most matter of fact way, and no kid deserves that ever. anyway, you asked for our experiences, so... my family were mostly pretty chill, they didn't know i was autistic but they were open-minded and generally ok with me being a bit weird. the problems i had were once i was at school. from the moment i started school i was bullied, including physically when i was really young (that was in early years, it stopped by the time i was in main school). i was smart and did great in most lessons, but until middle school i generally only had one friend at a time (often autistic kids whose meltdowns alienated them from other kids, and in one case an autistic kid with a horrible home life that made him violent to the other kids) and everyone else kind of didn't like me. most of my childhood memories are basically positive, but they're interspersed with stuff like sitting on the bench that was designated the "buddy bench" (ie if you have no one to play with you sit there and if you see someone sitting there you should go ask them if they want to play with you) all lunch time and never being acknowledged, running around the playground and hiding in random places so that people would think i was playing tag with someone instead of being alone, being completely unable to handle being yelled at at all and either crying (and being made fun of for crying) or just lying to get out of it... then i was in middle school and all my interests were constantly mocked by my friends, everything about me was picked apart, i was always last to get the joke and last to stop laughing once i'd got it. by upper school (gcses and a levels) i had a seemingly solid group of friends but i was still never really on the same wavelength as anyone else, everything i said and did was misinterpreted in the worst possible light, so i was often "in trouble" with my friends. and then for years, including recently, not being able to read people's tone of voice well especially over text has led to me being accused of trauma-dumping and generally being too much for people/asking for too much support, because i'd ask if it was an ok time to talk and they'd say yes and i was supposed to just somehow know that they actually meant no...so people have abandoned me over and over. i don't mean i did nothing wrong, just that i was genuinely trying and there was no accommodation made that could have helped me to see where the unspoken boundaries were before i accidentally crossed them. so now i have terrible social anxiety, i feel chronically lonely and i'm terrified my friends will leave me. i've had both healthy and terrible coping mechanisms, and no mental health professional has ever really been able to help because i *know* all the logical/healthy/etc things and knowing that makes absolutely no difference to how i feel.
Thanks for sharing your story! I can relate with a lot. So good you understood what happened and can see now, that it hurt and traumatized you. That was a big step for me too. (I'm not diagnosed autistic yet, but am pretty sure I am)
Unaskedyfor rec, but: I really like Patrick Teahan's work here on youtube for mapping into troubles that come from family systems where we were betrayed or abused by our caretakers; you've almost read off a textbook "Looks Good On Paper" family-of-origin experience, here, according to the therapeutic atlas he's practicing. Thanks for the channel.
My mom loved calling me lazy because I wouldn't do chores when she was hovering near me and screaming at me about everything that I was doing wrong. She'd scream and scream until I would quit doing the chore. I wasn't lazy because if she was gone I did my chores no problem. She disliked me more than my siblings but she tried not to play favorites. I feel that she let my dad abuse me as well. She has mellowed out some in old age so I do talk to her. But she never seemed like a mother to me. She would stiffen up if we hugged her. I think that is due to probable autism. But as a kid I just felt she didn't really love us. I just see her as a relative not a mother. She told us numerous times that she never wanted any kids and we were all mistakes. But now she is much more pleasant and affirming her old age.
I feel all of this on such a level. I have such similar past family dynamics, abusive mother, diagnosed brother in childhood and I am in my 30s just finding out I'm autistic. Getting blamed for having feelings about being shamed and beaten. Although in my case it was God telling me I wasn't worthy or some bullshit evangelical fundie magical thinking.
I understand. Both of my parents were emotionally unavailable. Probably because they both had their own issues. My Mom is definitely autistic..my Dad had other mental health issues. Good thing that I don’t have siblings.
I hope you are doing well! Today has been a rough one for me in this process of living with those who actively make me mask more while trying to unmask and be okay with being myself. But as always, watching this helped. A psychologist youtuber I recently started watching (Georgia Dow) said in a recent video of hers that she thinks it is helpful to refer to trauma victims as trauma survivors instead, and for some reason it has been helpful for me. The context of knowing I did what I needed to cope and survive, and I did survive, and hopefully now I can heal. So if that was not how you already thought about it, I hope it is a helpful thought. If not, I hope the healing process is going as well as it can regardless. My trauma stories are different, but still relate in a number of ways. Unfortunately I had to move back in with the primary source of my trauma (my father) to be able to afford my autism assessment. And although he is doing better about how he treats me, I still dont want to be near him. And to my surprise, my brother, who I thought was supposed to be a friend and care about my situation, just ends up defending my dad and devaluing my pain because he doesn't understand my trauma. I keep tryig to reach out to those around me, but so far I havent had anyone willing to actually listen. Still though, your videos help keep me and my pain company, in a parasocial kind of way, that is immensely helpful. So as I've said before, thank you. I hope you are doing as well as you can, and also thank you for reading all this if you have
You didn’t deserve the way you were treated/neglected. One way to deal with it is to think about a situation when you needed a parent to be there for you properly, and think about or write down what you you would tell/do for your younger self. It’s surprising healing to have your own feelings validated by your older self. ❤
I'm so, so sorry you had assholes for a mother and for a brother. You did not deserve that, no child does. My family struggled with poverty, and we have been abused by my father, our needs were not fulfilled because my mom has very little knowledge of mental issues and has prejudices and was too struggling herself to help her kids, which is still an issue today since I'm the one who has to make all of the efforts it seems. But I've always known she loved me as much as my siblings, and she didn't consttantly pushed me down. Granted, she didn't lift me up either, she was satisfied when I got good grades and degrees but only recently did she start congratulating me on achievements, when before she would just have taken it as normal for me to get achievements. She also did not know how tto help me when I was bullied tto the point of gettting sick before or in front of the school and so told me to ignore bullies and put up a confident front.
You've gone into more detail than I ever would :) I will say that I've experienced some of the same things. I internalized some of that crap, but I think I managed to fight the rest of it -- at least without internalizing it. Either that or I'm so good at internalizing things that I still haven't noticed most of them. Can you think, "No, that's not fair," about something and still internalize it?
I wonder if attributing it to one's own autism is just giving an excuse to those who treated you the way they did. For my part my mother ended up writing to me, when was already an adult, to tell me that while she had struggled with feelings of guilt for the fact that she didn't love me, she had eventually decided to forgive herself, because "you were a boy nobody could love". My mother used shaming and humiliation, and often pointed out my "flaws", through my childhood. She gave me nicknames and would pick on me for things that I now recognise were manifestations of autism, like not making eye contact, my lack of expression, being "taciturn", that sort of thing. My father on the other hand would mostly be pretty distant, but had a hair-trigger temper and would flog me with a belt or riding whip for doing what he saw as the wrong thing. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what it was for, but I got floggings for such things as not eating my lunch, absentmindedness,, saying the wrong thing, even crying. It would come like thunder out of a blue sky, so I was always on edge - I developed stress-related eczema and had terrible nightmares. I had to learn to tread carefully, and be wary. I don't remember any support or encouragement, and I could never ask for help with anything. That would just lead to trouble. All this, plus what was going on at school and out in the world, had me actively working on masking from quite a young age. It wasn't all terrible, and other kids no doubt had it worse, but one of the things that also strike me, in retrospect, is how my parents always put huge value on loyalty to the family, so that none of this stuff ever got talked about. There are a lot of other things, but I don't want this to come of like a "woe is me" whinge. It is a long way in the past now.
Hi Dana, Sorry you went through all of that, no one deserves it. What type of books did you read? What authors? Did you find solace in reading? I wish I had read as a child as I heard it can be very helpful.
Your hair is quite pretty. It frames your lovely face just perfectly. I love that you're more you and less fake. With all the enhancements available today, most women are all starting to all look the same. Way overdone. Lol we can't be that hard on the eyes without all that stuff! Geez.....
I know this is a heavy subject and all, I don't mean to be disrespectful. But I can't look away at the fact that you seem to be wearing your sweater backwards. I know it's dumb, my bf puts on his t-shirts and his pants backwards all the time and I have to point that out everytime he does it so he doesn't goes out of the house like that and other people notice. I had to pause the video and write a comment about it, sorry! I can relate to the subject of the video because I'm autistic and do think I have trauma and all. I just can't help myself 😅sorry Dana! I love your videos btw (:
I literally relate to everything, you gave words to my own trauma. I definitely still need to process a lot and I guess that’s normal when you finally get what’s going on after all those years. Thank you so much for sharing!!🫶🏼
our story is so similar. i felt that because my parents remained together for my youth i had no trauma. till i grew up and realised how fucked up i am. only when i found out i was autistic could i start reprocessing it and understanding how dysfunctional it all was. @audhdwomanwaits x
oh, and i also got name calling. my whole family called me 'titless toni' for a time. and they would should maths questions i couldnt comprehend at me (it was basic maths- i have dyscalculia and it makes me have meltdowns)
In some ways the worst types of abuse/neglect are often the most covert types which remain covert because wider society doesn't consider it abuse or neglect. The sufferer feels the damaging affects but can't quite label/describe them and there are no supports in wider society to address it. That's what makes it all the more damaging.
@@LuciaExpressions exactly. It becomes an ongoing cycle. It's one that I've dealt with and only recently have learned to break, through educating myself and becoming aware of abusive personalities, particularly those connected with clinically recognized B Cluster personality disorders/traits such as narcissism, BPD, and antisocial tendencies. I'm dyspraxic and was raised in a highly abusive narcissistic family system where I was not accepted, let alone loved for who I was, neurodivergence and all.
@@LuciaExpressions whatever helps and brings happiness is well worth it. Sometimes a lot of alone time can be an effective part of the recovery process. Whenever you're ready to have a more active social life, you'll know it. Play everything by ear and do what feels right for you.
@@LuciaExpressions you're welcome :)
@@LuciaExpressionsI also feel that I can't b myself with others around
This. Gaslighting is so insidious and damaging
always being gaslit as being "too sensitive, so dramatic" my emotional needs ignored cause i "wanted attention"
My childhood as well. The intersection of narcissistic parents (the actual personality disorder) and undiagnosed autism is hellish.
Yup, been there 😅
Ditto
"My struggles were seen as intentional"
So much of what you've said I relate to, both in my childood and my relationship with my Mum currently. It's heartbreaking to feel so deeply misunderstood and shamed / blamed for struggling
Adults misunderstand us ND as ND kids.
I kept getting a painful feeling in my chest when you were talking about this stuff, I relate to a lot of it in ways that are hard for me to put in words. I'm also pretty alone in the world as a result as well since I had to stop talking to my dad for my own safety and my mom died a while back.
I don't know if others here have experienced this but a lot of my meltdowns as a child were framed as me being hysterical and crazy. I remember my parents would threaten to film me during then, and on the outside they just looked like panic attacks I think. From what I've heard from other autistic folks with abusive parents they've also heard the "What do you think the kids at your school would think if I showed them a video of you acting crazy" threat. Even now at 30 I hide most of my emotions from others unless I reach like some kind of extreme crisis point, and even then I don't have the tools for dealing with that in a healthy way since I was never really given them. Telling your crying kid to leave and not come out of their room until they've got a smile on their face ain't it ;-;
Try a book how do I feel by Rebecca Lipp. Yes it's aimed at under 13 but it is crystal clear, even for ND. I use it myself.
This is extremely relatable stuff. At the age of 40, diagnosed as autistic at 35, and starting to unpack the fact that literally everything I was punished for as a child (up to being beaten with a belt by my father) was a consequence of undiagnosed autism and something I literally had no control over. I don't know how to get over the degree to which I now know I've been mistreated my entire life.
I learned from a young age that 'children should be seen and not heard' so I spent all my energy trying to never show emotion and stopped asking questions and was seen as shy. I believed I was the issue and managed to switch off by becoming absorbed in books as much as possible (under the covers at night until I would fall asleep and kill the torch battery). As a teen I did everything to escape through drink and drugs which got me the anxiety and depression diagnosis then Borderline personality disorder when I turned 18. I was diagnosed with ASD and ADHD at 38 (2 years ago) and I am really struggling to let go of my control of myself (being still, polite, lacking in boundaries etc). I've isolated myself since the beginning of lockdown and dont want to be around anyone as am now sober and cant be around anyone as a result. I find myself living/running on adrenaline when around people and being in flight/freeze and mostly fawn which takes me ages to get out of wgen im on my own again as i struggle to relax without drugs.
I have a very similar story .I relate .I am unable to get clean and sober and have been isolated for years now.I don't even know who I am.I was sober for a few years ,then my son took his life and I have been in the cups and dope hatd since 07.I know it's really scary but and I also know AA helped me alot. I just don't care anymore.I just turned 60. You aren't alone. We need connection .
@Opticaldelusionist I'm sorry to hear about you loosing you're son in that way. That must be so difficult to deal with. I hope that in time, you are able to find a way/the will to care for yourself again. I wish you the best xx
This is incredibly relatable.
"This is why you don't have any friends." Unlocked a memory in me and I'm like. Damn.
This is very relatable. Today I told my partner I'm frightened he won't want to see me because I've been crying a lot recently and I shouldn't be around people unless I can "hold myself together". I don't think I know what it's like to be comforted when I'm sad, I've always been told to go and deal with my emotions by myself and come back when I'm "normal" again. As a child, and as an adult in relationships. I remember early in my marriage sitting at the top of the stairs sobbing because I was "too much" and my wife needed a break.
The sibling favouritism thing is relevant to me also. My mother had post-natal depression and it was well known in my early years that *I* was the one who had ruined her life and made her want to die. For a long time I've felt like a monster who hurts people by just existing, especially not knowing that I'm autistic and not understanding why people get upset and offended and some of the things I do and say, and when I ask for an explanation they tell me I must know what I've been doing and have been doing it on purpose.
This is sooo relatable! I've really struggled with accepting as an adult that my parents are never going to give me what I would want from a parent if that makes sense...?
I get envious when i see the support and friendliness that other people recieve from their parents when mine can be so cold. As you said i always had a roof over my head etc but they raised me with so much anger/impatience/uncaring that I just always feel like i missed out massively with regards the nice stuff that i see other people have experienced.
I'm still trying to accept it but it's hard! I find it easier to have a good relationship with them when i don't see them very often.
Same. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to have supportive, loving, caring parents. Never had that and I struggle to let go of the idea that they might change one day and miraculously turn into the wonderful parents I’ve always needed. It’s tough.
I can totally relate, my parents put me in the firing line so many times and this has effected my ability to function in the world as an adult. But the thing I find most frustrating is that I keep replaying past traumas in my head over and over and I don't know why? I can't seem to move on!
You might want to look into PTSD and maybe get therapy for it. You might be getting flashbacks and constantly reliving your trauma.
This is all so relatable. Recently my sister deleted me from social media because I was “too much” for her. When I was crying to my mom about why my sister was treating me this way, my mom said my sister was popular in high school and COULD HAVE been a mean girl but actually wasn’t. I was like, what the actual eff are you talking about?! I’m so sorry your mom couldn’t take you seriously 😔
Sounds like your mom likes to talk between the lines.
@@thethegreenmachine the message I got from my mom in that instance is I should be grateful my sister is ever nice to a loser like myself
@@babsbunny_
That might be what she meant. If you asked her, would you get a straight answer?
@@thethegreenmachine nope and I'm currently NC with her anyway
@@babsbunny_
What's "NC" mean?
I used to consider my childhood "normal & happy" until quite recently. But it really wasn't! I went through a lot of similar experiences, although my parents never told me they loved me - it just wasn't ever said in our house. I've only very recently (last few years) started to think of my experiences as abuse & neglect.
I remember my mother trying all the time to get me to play with other kids growing up and even getting stuff started as a means to get me to play along. I'd play with the other kids just fine for a little bit until I eventually managed to break off and play by myself. I was always told I was weird or creepy due to my not knowing what to do or how to do it. Eventually I started hyper focusing on the actions of others to try figuring out what the hell am I meant to do? It lead me into being used by "friends" and in the end I became more and more reclusive/hermit like and now I mostly spend my time alone and dreading interaction with people outside of my inner circle. I have few friends but the ones I do have I am very close with. In my youth I couldn't stop chattering away. Now it's more like "I want to say something, but odds are they won't understand. Never mind then."
I describe it to other folks like this:
God gave me a passive ability known as "Own Tempo". It grants insight and bonus resistance to confusion (due to the hyper analysis self defense mechanism). Penalty: Madness (neuro divergent traits I later realized). Whenever an action is made (spoken, written etc.) flip a coin; If the result is heads complete action as normal. If the result is tails action attempt fails and is misunderstood.
Stupid I know. it's just how I explain things to folks who don't have to struggle with this stuff.
Absolutely! I have too much knowledge about human nature, minds, interacts, social dynamics, and much more because I had to learn it to survive. Now the innocence is gone forever, the innocence of natural interaction that others enjoy. I learned so I could have great relationships, but now I have learned that's not how it works, which is very sad. I have only my husband for company, and he's on the spectrum too.
Hi Dana, I can completely identify with your childhood from the opposite side of the world.
I didn't dare remember my childhood during my young adulthood, I remembered little other than the names & dates, and that I had told myself that I would never forget how much I hated authority, my childhood, my mom, & the Catholic Church.
I went to extremes to block it out, until I started remembering horrible events from my that I couldn't communicate how they happened to anyone without them asking questions that I couldn't answer.
I experienced sibling favoritism severely, my mom loved my little sister, & hated me. I was gaslit too. It took me until after her death when I heard her older sister talk about the traumas the 2 girls had faced in a family which favored the much older & much younger boys, & why my mom had it way worse.
Lately I always cry when I try to remember the past, though my childhood eididic memory record remains locked in there.
I hope you read my comments on your recent videos.
“No wonder you don’t have any friends” - my mum to me when I was at high school. I’ll never forget it.
So relatable...brought tears to my eyes. I'm sorry you had to go through what you went through, but thanks for sharing and helping those of us who went through similar things feel less alone.
I've been witnessing my youngest sister out of 3 other siblings going through the same abysmal treatment you describe, which brings up traumatic memories from my childhood and what ive seen all my other siblings go through because we're all autistic including both my parents, but not a single one of us are diagnosed and they are completely heartless and cruel about our struggles and sensitivities
I wanna do something but I don't know how, mum has her own tantrums and will scream insults at me if I try to correct her or give me sinister glares the few times she's caught me trying to do better for my siblings in their absence. It's so depressing hearing the kids meltdown and fight every day while being put down by my parents
I had the same experience of a perfect looking mum from the outside and her being absolutely disinterested in... parenting me, and being just not there really. i dont think I had ever heard someone talking about that exact experience and it made me feel less alone and crazy like im making these thins up. thanks
I spent my childhood trying to keep my covert narc mother safe from my violent sadistic psychopath father who was SA me all of my childhood and filming it. I've seen footage of her walk in and catch him when I'm an infant. Nothing changed and she told me she 'stayed for me.' I've brought it up with her 4 times as an adult and she either blacks it out afterwards or is outright lying to me. The rest of society and people not caring about me is so much worse than the abuse itself. After 38 years I've lost hope and faith thanks to 'normal' people. Reading this it sounds so bad, yet my mother plays the victim so well that I feel guilty reducing contact with her. Plus I have hEDS and can't work so I have no one else and spent all my time poor at home with my elderly doggo
I have heds autism ADHD fybromyalgia do you have fybromyalgia from your heds autism
I feel like I was the favorite in the opposite way, where it looked like I wasn't struggling and that my sisters were the only ones who did because from a super young age I was just taught to internalize everything. My parents took me not looking like I was struggling as an excuse to ignore me so they could focus on my sisters because 'he's fine, we don't need to worry' meanwhile I was stuck being alone almost 24/7 playing video games in my room by myself because no one ever came to check up on me. Most of my childhood is just blank in my mind cuz I spent most of my time dissociating because that was my main way of handling things. There was never any physical abuse or anything, but as you said in the vid, the emotional side just wasn't there. It made me feel like a background character / outsider to my own life and everything around me.
The biggest gut punch happened a couple years ago when I was 22 and randomly my mother and stepdad told me that they were trying to figure out if they died randomly which out of the three of us kids would be the most 'ok'. And immediately they both said me. It's still stuck on my mind because it was basically confirmation that they do not know me / don't worry about me at all. It really fucked me up.
I'm in therapy for this stuff now and definitely had the same thing happen of 'nah I don't think anything was wrong' lol
My parents didn't want a disabled child. So they always told other people that I was just acting up to get attention. Then at home they would actually tell me " we only provide you with what you need to survive because it's the law. " When I would ask questions they would say " why are you so stupid" . Meanwhile my little half brother was the golden child and could do no wrong. I was never good in school D' s and F' s and I was punished for not trying hard enough. To this day I am undiagnosed , But I believe that I am autistic. I still don't know how to get help. I fear asking a doctor for an autism test, because I'm afraid they will think that I am self-diagnosing.
If you are able to come up with a chunk of cash somehow which is a tall ask I know, embrace autism is a practice run by an autistic woman who is seemingly very genuine with how much she knows about autism as presently is researched. Plus she's in Canada and it's all done online. I have been sitting on my assessment for a year feeling like a melodramatic imposter monster despite getting well over the average autistic female score on numerous psychometrics, which have been proving to have a high accuracy percentage in assessing autistic people vs neurotypical. I can't say I recommend with full gusto until I finally get through my internal fight with myself and actually send in the assessment. That's also assuming she still will take me for an appointment I was supposed to finish the questionnaire for within 3 months, not a full year. There's a chance I lost all that money but I have some hope she's not going to be that capitalistic and tack on consequence fee for being a year late or whatever. I digress though. Just wanted to pass the information on about the potential resource and I hope I am conveying support and empathy as is my intended expression. If anything else is interpreted, especially if it's hurtful, I am so sorry
I went to a cheap elderly sychiatrist to get diagnosed I have fybromyalgia from my autism heds why I got diagnosed
Yes. The sibling favoritism. I am lucky my sister and i are very close now, but it disnt use to be that way. . My sister admitted to me as adults that she was favored by our parents, and knew it was wrong. It was a very wonderful gift.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Dana, I will keep it short. I lived a very similar life, but as an only child. I felt very alone with my struggles. Thank you for sharing, you have made a difference.
I had a Neurotypical step-mother. She used the money my father was ordered in his divorce with my Mom to pay for me as adult child support on building herself a children's book empire. She used to blame me for everything, and she and her mother, Celia, called me "the black sheep of the family" because I'm Autistic. She and her mother wouldn't let me sit anywhere near my half-brother, Jessee, because I "might contaminate him" somehow, and they would wipe their hands off on their clothes anytime they accidently touoched me as if I was contagious. She made up lies about me all the time and was really mean to me. It was horrible, It was a horrible experiuence to even know her, There wasn't one moment she didn't inflict trauma on me. Nobody has any idea what she was like to me when no one else was around.
Darn! This is actually a sad story. I was already sad. Now I feel even sadder. I wish I had watched this video when I was feeling okay :(
Depression at age 12, is a hormone problem. I’ve had severe depression, and terrible anxiety, from age 12 (still have it today). I have too much estrogen, for a male. For me, there were physical consequences, as well. It’s created quite a mess. My childhood was a string of nonstop trauma. Would’ve been nice to know about the causes of my problems: ADHD, Autism, SCA. (I’ve been estranged from my mother, the primary source of my trauma, for over a decade. She traumatized my children, which was an unforgivable act.
relate. relate. relate. relate. relate. relate. relate. i can relate. so much.
Avery similar experience and it never got any better despite my diagnosis and today at 57 years of age my family still dismiss me and have no idea of why I struggle to live on my own why I don't work why I don't have a relazionship and why I have very few genuine freinds I hold two degrees in Science subjects and they expectatuon is far too high.I constantly lock myself out of my home I am disorganised forget appointments and can't deal with family events its shocking I was very traumatised😢😢😢😢😢
I’m sorry you went through this… 😢 I also come from an emotionally abusive & neglectful family. It’s a struggle to recover from it, even after years of ‘working’ on it… ❤
My sister and i shared a room growing up. My mom would sit down with my sister and hold her and sweet talk her for 10 to 30 minutes at bedtime. She would walk past me and say goodnight.
It’s so confusing when you have a detailed accurate memory and your parents rewrite theirs. Like, I still know my memories are the truth, but now you can’t talk about them with your parents because their memories “don’t agree” - that’s what’s confusing.
Well I'm 54 & I'm still struggling to deal with my childhood trauma/torture. Keep strong xx
ok firstly, the thing you said about not wanting to make things seem worse than they were broke my heart because you had just described your mother treating you like absolute dirt in the most matter of fact way, and no kid deserves that ever.
anyway, you asked for our experiences, so...
my family were mostly pretty chill, they didn't know i was autistic but they were open-minded and generally ok with me being a bit weird. the problems i had were once i was at school. from the moment i started school i was bullied, including physically when i was really young (that was in early years, it stopped by the time i was in main school). i was smart and did great in most lessons, but until middle school i generally only had one friend at a time (often autistic kids whose meltdowns alienated them from other kids, and in one case an autistic kid with a horrible home life that made him violent to the other kids) and everyone else kind of didn't like me. most of my childhood memories are basically positive, but they're interspersed with stuff like sitting on the bench that was designated the "buddy bench" (ie if you have no one to play with you sit there and if you see someone sitting there you should go ask them if they want to play with you) all lunch time and never being acknowledged, running around the playground and hiding in random places so that people would think i was playing tag with someone instead of being alone, being completely unable to handle being yelled at at all and either crying (and being made fun of for crying) or just lying to get out of it... then i was in middle school and all my interests were constantly mocked by my friends, everything about me was picked apart, i was always last to get the joke and last to stop laughing once i'd got it. by upper school (gcses and a levels) i had a seemingly solid group of friends but i was still never really on the same wavelength as anyone else, everything i said and did was misinterpreted in the worst possible light, so i was often "in trouble" with my friends. and then for years, including recently, not being able to read people's tone of voice well especially over text has led to me being accused of trauma-dumping and generally being too much for people/asking for too much support, because i'd ask if it was an ok time to talk and they'd say yes and i was supposed to just somehow know that they actually meant no...so people have abandoned me over and over. i don't mean i did nothing wrong, just that i was genuinely trying and there was no accommodation made that could have helped me to see where the unspoken boundaries were before i accidentally crossed them. so now i have terrible social anxiety, i feel chronically lonely and i'm terrified my friends will leave me. i've had both healthy and terrible coping mechanisms, and no mental health professional has ever really been able to help because i *know* all the logical/healthy/etc things and knowing that makes absolutely no difference to how i feel.
Thanks for sharing your story!
I can relate with a lot.
So good you understood what happened and can see now, that it hurt and traumatized you.
That was a big step for me too.
(I'm not diagnosed autistic yet, but am pretty sure I am)
I really relate to the 3 points in the video
This video is very relatable to me. I don’t know what else to say.
Unaskedyfor rec, but:
I really like Patrick Teahan's work here on youtube for mapping into troubles that come from family systems where we were betrayed or abused by our caretakers; you've almost read off a textbook "Looks Good On Paper" family-of-origin experience, here, according to the therapeutic atlas he's practicing.
Thanks for the channel.
My mom loved calling me lazy because I wouldn't do chores when she was hovering near me and screaming at me about everything that I was doing wrong. She'd scream and scream until I would quit doing the chore. I wasn't lazy because if she was gone I did my chores no problem.
She disliked me more than my siblings but she tried not to play favorites.
I feel that she let my dad abuse me as well.
She has mellowed out some in old age so I do talk to her. But she never seemed like a mother to me. She would stiffen up if we hugged her. I think that is due to probable autism. But as a kid I just felt she didn't really love us. I just see her as a relative not a mother. She told us numerous times that she never wanted any kids and we were all mistakes. But now she is much more pleasant and affirming her old age.
I get a lot out of these chats. Thank you.
I feel all of this on such a level. I have such similar past family dynamics, abusive mother, diagnosed brother in childhood and I am in my 30s just finding out I'm autistic. Getting blamed for having feelings about being shamed and beaten. Although in my case it was God telling me I wasn't worthy or some bullshit evangelical fundie magical thinking.
I understand. Both of my parents were emotionally unavailable. Probably because they both had their own issues. My Mom is definitely autistic..my Dad had other mental health issues. Good thing that I don’t have siblings.
Hi Dana, good morning ❤ another beautiful day, another amazing insights
I hope you are doing well! Today has been a rough one for me in this process of living with those who actively make me mask more while trying to unmask and be okay with being myself. But as always, watching this helped.
A psychologist youtuber I recently started watching (Georgia Dow) said in a recent video of hers that she thinks it is helpful to refer to trauma victims as trauma survivors instead, and for some reason it has been helpful for me. The context of knowing I did what I needed to cope and survive, and I did survive, and hopefully now I can heal. So if that was not how you already thought about it, I hope it is a helpful thought. If not, I hope the healing process is going as well as it can regardless.
My trauma stories are different, but still relate in a number of ways. Unfortunately I had to move back in with the primary source of my trauma (my father) to be able to afford my autism assessment. And although he is doing better about how he treats me, I still dont want to be near him. And to my surprise, my brother, who I thought was supposed to be a friend and care about my situation, just ends up defending my dad and devaluing my pain because he doesn't understand my trauma. I keep tryig to reach out to those around me, but so far I havent had anyone willing to actually listen. Still though, your videos help keep me and my pain company, in a parasocial kind of way, that is immensely helpful. So as I've said before, thank you.
I hope you are doing as well as you can, and also thank you for reading all this if you have
🏆 Great Video. Thank you. I can definitely understand and relate.
You didn’t deserve the way you were treated/neglected. One way to deal with it is to think about a situation when you needed a parent to be there for you properly, and think about or write down what you you would tell/do for your younger self. It’s surprising healing to have your own feelings validated by your older self. ❤
Thanks for the upload!! (Sorry about the other day... bad headspace. Again.... many apologies! )💕
You deserve a far better childhood than you got.
I'm so, so sorry you had assholes for a mother and for a brother. You did not deserve that, no child does. My family struggled with poverty, and we have been abused by my father, our needs were not fulfilled because my mom has very little knowledge of mental issues and has prejudices and was too struggling herself to help her kids, which is still an issue today since I'm the one who has to make all of the efforts it seems. But I've always known she loved me as much as my siblings, and she didn't consttantly pushed me down. Granted, she didn't lift me up either, she was satisfied when I got good grades and degrees but only recently did she start congratulating me on achievements, when before she would just have taken it as normal for me to get achievements. She also did not know how tto help me when I was bullied tto the point of gettting sick before or in front of the school and so told me to ignore bullies and put up a confident front.
You've gone into more detail than I ever would :) I will say that I've experienced some of the same things. I internalized some of that crap, but I think I managed to fight the rest of it -- at least without internalizing it. Either that or I'm so good at internalizing things that I still haven't noticed most of them. Can you think, "No, that's not fair," about something and still internalize it?
Great video!
I wonder if attributing it to one's own autism is just giving an excuse to those who treated you the way they did. For my part my mother ended up writing to me, when was already an adult, to tell me that while she had struggled with feelings of guilt for the fact that she didn't love me, she had eventually decided to forgive herself, because "you were a boy nobody could love".
My mother used shaming and humiliation, and often pointed out my "flaws", through my childhood. She gave me nicknames and would pick on me for things that I now recognise were manifestations of autism, like not making eye contact, my lack of expression, being "taciturn", that sort of thing.
My father on the other hand would mostly be pretty distant, but had a hair-trigger temper and would flog me with a belt or riding whip for doing what he saw as the wrong thing. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what it was for, but I got floggings for such things as not eating my lunch, absentmindedness,, saying the wrong thing, even crying. It would come like thunder out of a blue sky, so I was always on edge - I developed stress-related eczema and had terrible nightmares. I had to learn to tread carefully, and be wary.
I don't remember any support or encouragement, and I could never ask for help with anything. That would just lead to trouble.
All this, plus what was going on at school and out in the world, had me actively working on masking from quite a young age.
It wasn't all terrible, and other kids no doubt had it worse, but one of the things that also strike me, in retrospect, is how my parents always put huge value on loyalty to the family, so that none of this stuff ever got talked about.
There are a lot of other things, but I don't want this to come of like a "woe is me" whinge. It is a long way in the past now.
Oh shit, wow , very strong memories of being asked to recite the hyeracy ( god at the top me at the bottom)
Hi Dana, Sorry you went through all of that, no one deserves it. What type of books did you read? What authors? Did you find solace in reading? I wish I had read as a child as I heard it can be very helpful.
Your hair is quite pretty. It frames your lovely face just perfectly. I love that you're more you and less fake. With all the enhancements available today, most women are all starting to all look the same. Way overdone. Lol we can't be that hard on the eyes without all that stuff! Geez.....
I know this is a heavy subject and all, I don't mean to be disrespectful. But I can't look away at the fact that you seem to be wearing your sweater backwards. I know it's dumb, my bf puts on his t-shirts and his pants backwards all the time and I have to point that out everytime he does it so he doesn't goes out of the house like that and other people notice. I had to pause the video and write a comment about it, sorry! I can relate to the subject of the video because I'm autistic and do think I have trauma and all. I just can't help myself 😅sorry Dana! I love your videos btw (:
Not just you.
so what does your mother watch your videos and leave you nasty messages or something?
I literally relate to everything, you gave words to my own trauma. I definitely still need to process a lot and I guess that’s normal when you finally get what’s going on after all those years. Thank you so much for sharing!!🫶🏼
our story is so similar. i felt that because my parents remained together for my youth i had no trauma. till i grew up and realised how fucked up i am. only when i found out i was autistic could i start reprocessing it and understanding how dysfunctional it all was. @audhdwomanwaits x
oh, and i also got name calling. my whole family called me 'titless toni' for a time. and they would should maths questions i couldnt comprehend at me (it was basic maths- i have dyscalculia and it makes me have meltdowns)